A copy of paste of an response I wrote to a Facebook friend of mine when he asked, rhetorically, "what if things will actually get better?
My own thoughts as a more moderate liberal:
1) With the Senate still in Republican hands, outside of a response to the pandemic, I don't expect any serious policy changes for minimally the next two years. This won't be from lack of trying, it will just be Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans being Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans and things will be more or less like the last few years of the Obama Whitehouse.
2) I do think things will improve on the pandemic front. As cynical as I am about Republicans these days, even I don't think they will ignore or wish away the coronavirus (as much Trump has tried too this year). It's killing on average a 1000 Americans a day RIGHT NOW, even they won't be able to ignore whatever the enormity of damage that will exist come January 20th.
I believe this pandemic has revealed the necessity of a coordinated response on the federal level, of which the Trump Administration wasn't really doing. The greater concern I have is that, because of our enormously flaccid response to the pandemic by our current President (who told me repeatedly it would all disappear by last week), Biden is going to to come into a situation 200 steps behind were he could and ought have been if our current leader wasn't such an unserious asshole. We're about to endure a long winter and I have no reason to expect Trump to actually try and *do* anything about that, just whine and flail and file lawsuits about an election he has no hope of winning.
3) The major improvement I think for the country, outside of the pandemic response, though will be that we will have a BORING president again, and I don't mean that in a bad way. It means we're going to have a president again who doesn't govern via tweet, who doesn't throw entire agencies and government responses into chaos with his tweets.
For example we're not going to have a situation where the President decides to ban travelers from Europe without notifying anyone, causing chaos and misery at airports and across the country like he did a couple of years or so ago.
We will have serious people in the office again who actually know what they're doing and something I think people will begin to realize as time progresses is how much stress it was putting on the public all of the chaos that the Narcissist in Chief was constantly creating by making himself the constant subject of conversation and how much mental and emotional space was reserved for that. It will be like a slow uncoiling of the collective psyche of the country.
So could things get better? I certainly hope so. Biden campaigned on his ability to reach across the aisle so maybe he has some secret McConnell-whisperer super power that I'm not not aware of, but I'm not expecting him to be able to meaningfully do anything about that.
For me, it'll be a massive improvement knowing that someone is at the helm that takes the job seriously, that doesn't want to turn every GOD DAMN DAY into an event ALL ABOUT HIM. I think at the BAREST minimum having government staffed with people who take it seriously will in itself have a positive effect.
It is also my sincere hope is that my Republican brothers and sisters will re-evaluate what they look for in a leader and try and find someone who represents the best of conservative values that ISN'T such a malignant assclown. I firmly believe our country *needs* representation of principled conservative values and that when we have such representation is when our country is at its best.